2009 - IIASA

Transcription

2009 - IIASA

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IIASA Mission
IIASA’s mission is to provide insight and guidance
to policymakers worldwide by finding solutions to global
and universal problems through applied systems analysis
in order to improve human and social wellbeing and
to protect the environment.
IIASA Governing Council, January 2010
Prof.Dr. Gerhard Glatzel, Austria
Prof.Dr. Jie Wang, China
Prof. Mohsen M. Shoukry, Egypt
Dr. Markku Mattila, Finland
Prof.Dr. Peter Lemke, Germany (Chair)
Dr. Kirit S. Parikh, India
Prof. Kenji Yamaji, Japan (Vice Chair)
Dr. Chan-Mo Park, Republic of Korea
Prof.Dr. Jos J. Engelen, Netherlands
Dr. Kirsten Broch Mathisen, Norway
Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad, Pakistan
Prof. Olgierd Hryniewicz, Poland (Observer Country)
Prof. Alexei D. Gvishiani, Russia
Dr. Dorsamy (Gansen) Pillay, South Africa
Dr. Rolf Annerberg, Sweden
Academician Anatolij P. Shpak, Ukraine
Prof. Simon Levin, United States of America (Vice Chair)
Schloss Laxenburg, Austria—home of IIASA
IIASA Science Advisory Committee, January 2010
Prof. Arild Underdal, Norway (Chair)
Prof. Meinrat O. Andreae, Germany
Dr. Barbara Boyle Torrey, United States of America
Prof. Kanchan Chopra, India
Prof. William C. Clark, United States of America
Prof. Ogunlade R. Davidson, Sierra Leone
Prof. Carl Folke, Sweden
Prof. Joyeeta Gupta, Netherlands
Dr. Lea Kauppi, Finland
Prof. Eric Lambin, Belgium
Dr. Alexey Malovichko, Russia
Prof. Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Germany
Prof. Coleen Vogel, South Africa
Prof. Rusong Wang, China
2
IIASA Annual Report 2009
Contents
© 2010 IIASA
ZVR-Nr: 524808900
Sections of the IIASA Annual Report 2009
may be reproduced with acknowledgment to IIASA.
Copies of reproduced material should be sent to:
IIASA, Communications Department
A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone: +43 2236 807 342
Fax: +43 2236 807 201
Web: www.iiasa.ac.at
E-mail: [email protected]
The IIASA Annual Report 2009 was produced
by the IIASA Communications Department.
Printed by Remaprint, Vienna
IIASA
International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis
www.iiasa.ac.at
From IIASA’s Chairman and Director 4
IIASA Highlights 1972–2008 6
IIASA Highlights 2009 Scientific Excellence International, Interdisciplinary Research Policy-Relevant Research Capacity Building 10
12
14
16
IIASA Research Updates Environment & Natural Resources Population & Society Energy & Technology Institute-Wide Research and Special Projects 18
20
22
24
IIASA Staff Young Scientists Postdoctoral Research Fellows IIASA Alumni Mid-Career Researchers New and Returning Researchers IIASA’s Research Leaders 26
27
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30
31
IIASA Financials International Funding for International Research 32
Contracts, Grants, and Donations 2009 33
3
From IIASA’s
Chairman and Director
After our first full year as Chairman and Director of IIASA, we are pleased to report on
a successful year for the Institute, including a strengthening of ties with our National
Member Organizations and international recognition for IIASA’s research and standing
in the scientific community.
STRATEGIC PLAN, 2011–2020
A major achievement of 2009 came mid-year with the approval by the IIASA Council
of the Strategic Plan 2011–2020, Research for a Changing World, which was published
in September. Three new main research areas for the upcoming decade were
approved by the Council: (1) Energy and Climate Change; (2) Food and Water; and
(3) Poverty and Equity. These will incorporate studies of the main drivers of global
transformation, specifically: population growth and technological change, economic
growth and globalization. Innovations in systems analysis, growing policy relevance,
and increased capacity building round out the research strategy for the next decade.
Ensuring the continuing strong impact of IIASA’s work is a major task for the Institute.
The preparatory work for the 2011–2020 Plan was particularly challenging, as it
started under the shadow of the world economic “meltdown” of October 2008.
It was apparent to IIASA from the start of the planning process that the global
financial crisis had massive ramifications for human wellbeing, the environment,
and the interlinked problems of climate change and energy resources. Modeling and
analyzing these systemic risks in an integrated way was therefore an important part of
IIASA’s new research strategy. The successful completion of IIASA’s research strategy
in 2009 will be followed by a more detailed research and implementation plan,
to be completed in 2010.
Prof. Peter Lemke, Chairman
EXTERNAL COLLABORATION
It was a watershed year, too, for building external relations between IIASA and other
international organizations and research partners. With the 15th Conference of Parties
(COP15) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aiming to
negotiate a new climate agreement in December in Copenhagen, IIASA high-level
advisory activity intensified. In May IIASA briefed the United Nations Secretary-General (SG) Ban Ki-moon
on energy and climate change. In June the SG invited IIASA’s Deputy Director, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, to join
the UNSG Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change, whose brief was to tackle energy issues critical to
the development and implementation of a post-Kyoto climate change agreement. In September IIASA was
invited to participate in the UN Leadership Forum on Climate Change to identify solutions for climate change
mitigation and adaptation to take forward to the COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen.
At IIASA research on climate change cuts across all IIASA programs—with eight contributing directly to
the Institute’s dedicated Greenhouse Gas Initiative (GGI). Much of IIASA’s research work in 2009 was
COP15-oriented. Notably, the IIASA GAINS modeling tool was used extensively, both internally and
by scientists and policymakers outside the Institute, to obtain up-to-date comparative information on
countries’ efforts to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) ahead of COP15 negotiations. Developing workable
strategies to elaborate monitoring and financing schemes for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation
and forest Degradation (REDD) was another major focus for IIASA. The Institute participated in many key
COP15-related workshops, working groups, and meetings in the run-up to Copenhagen. At the climate
change talks themselves, IIASA, with the Indian Energy and Resources Institute, co-hosted a well-attended
side event on integrated climate science and policy approaches to inform decision making.
4
The Global Energy Assessment (GEA), co-founded by and headquartered at IIASA, also plays a large role
in integrating energy and climate change research at IIASA and globally. A major GEA research focus was
development in 2009 of the transformational energy scenarios that form the analytical backbone of the
GEA. At the high-level International Energy Conference in June in Vienna, the GEA was recommended
as the support structure to guide research, increase global knowledge, and support energy policy
development on behalf of UN Energy. At COP15 Germany joined the GEA, citing its potential as
one of most important tools for policymakers at this important juncture of major global challenges.
MAJOR SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS
There were a number of notable scientific achievements by IIASA in 2009, only a few of which
can be mentioned here. IIASA and partners released a new online and DVD version of the
Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) with updates for several Congo Basin countries.
This provides valuable information for policymakers addressing the emerging problems of
carbon sequestration, agricultural expansion, and environmental protection.
IIASA-developed land-use models (GLOBIOM, G4M, EPIC) are providing support
for policy development on avoided deforestation in the Congo Basin and more
broadly, informing discussions on how to reward developing countries for
protecting their forests.
An IIASA team, with local partners, which assessed the challenges and
opportunities for disaster risk management and climate adaptation in
India, Nepal, and Pakistan, found that disaster risk reduction can “pay,”
justifying public and donor investment.
A study involving IIASA and international colleagues, published in 2009,
identified regional “hotspots” in sub-Saharan Africa where early policy and
management intervention may avert future hunger.
IIASA contributed to a White Paper, discussed at the Arctic Ministerial Council and
the International Melting Ice Conference in Norway, which puts forward mitigation
options for black carbon (or soot) as a means of reducing Arctic ice melt.
CAPACITY BUILDING
Outreach and capacity building, particularly for developing countries, were priorities
in 2009. Another successful Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) welcomed
53 young scientists from over 20 nations. YSSP co-hosted a keynote presentation
by one of the world’s leading environmentalists and first Executive Director of the
UN Environment Programme, Maurice Strong. Fifteen postdoctoral researchers
worked at IIASA in 2009. Other notable events were a hands-on training workshop
for 25 policy advisors and national experts from Russia, Belarus, Moldova, China, and
nine Western European countries on the use and application of the GAINS model,
as well as co-organization of a graduate summer school at Moscow State University
to study modern mathematical approaches to the assessment of economic growth.
Prof. Detlof von winterfeldt, Director
AWARDS
We are proud to note several awards to IIASA scientists in 2009.
Wolfgang Lutz was honored with the Mattei Dogan Award, which is bestowed
by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population once every
four years for comparative demographic analysis.
Vegard Skirbekk was awarded the European Research Council’s European Starting Independent
Researcher Grant for a five-year study on how factors such as productivity, attitudes, and
beliefs will change in Europe in the next 50 years.
Detlof von Winterfeldt was awarded the Gold Medal of the International Society for Multicriteria Decision
Making (MCDM) at its bi-annual conference in Chengdu, China; Buzz Holling (IIASA Director 1981–1984)
was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada; and Anatoly Shvidenko was awarded the Honorary
Medal of Forestry Society by the Russian Union of Foresters.
IIASA scientists published prolifically in 172 peer-reviewed journals and books in 2009, served as
editors for scientific journals and publications, and were leading members of science advisory boards
and steering committees.
Expertise and experience in advanced systems analysis is IIASA’s strength. In a rapidly transforming,
interconnected, and complex world, we look forward to an increasing role for IIASA in developing
science for effective policymaking.
5
IIASA § From
IIASA § Highlights
the Chairman and the
1972–2008
Director
IIASA Highlights 1972–2008
In 2009 IIASA embarked on a new direction with the launch of its new
strategic plan. The strategy will see the Institute, from 2011, focus its
expertise and experience on three major problems: (1) Energy and
Climate Change; (2) Food and Water; and (3) Poverty and Equity.
Our world is changing, with fundamental shifts occurring in economic and
political power, growing global environmental problems, and potentially
explosive social conflicts. The new strategy places IIASA in a position to
apply advanced systems analysis to achieve a better understanding of
the complex, interdependent challenges that countries now face.
It is not the first time that IIASA’s direction has been shaped by a
changing world. In 1972 IIASA was established to use science to
build bridges across the Cold War divide. It was part of the detente,
or thawing of relations, between the USA and the Soviet Union and
benefited from the support of both US President Lyndon Johnson
and USSR Premier Alexey Kosygin. IIASA’s research agenda was to focus
on the growing global problems then facing advanced industrial societies.
When the Cold War ended, the Institute broadened its mandate, from being a tool for
East–West cooperation to assuming a truly global focus. Today IIASA’s member countries
account for over half the world’s population and include the world’s four largest economies.
The annual report focuses on the Institute’s work and accomplishments in 2009 but begins by putting
these activities in context with a summary of IIASA’s highlights from 1972 to 2008. Uniting all these
achievements are IIASA’s core characteristics: scientific excellence, an interdisciplinary approach,
independence from both governments and countries, and the relevance of its research for policymakers.
This combination makes IIASA a unique and truly international research institute.
More detailed information is available on the IIASA Web: www.iiasa.ac.at
56
IIASA § Highlights 1972–2008
1972
At the height of the Cold War, 12 nations from the East and West
meet in London to sign the charter establishing IIASA in the
neutral setting of Austria.
1974
George Dantzig, winner of the US National Medal of Science,
is joined at IIASA by Nobel Prize laureates Tjalling Koopmans
(USA) and Leonid Kantorovich (USSR) to expand IIASA’s study
of advanced systems science and methodology.
1980
A chance conversation between IIASA colleagues brings
unexpected results. James Vaupel, a US demographer,
mentions a scientific problem to Soviet mathematician,
Anatoli Yashin. “I think I can help,” Yashin replies.
The two go on to develop more reliable projections
of population aging in developed countries.
1981
1975
A new research field, Adaptive Ecosystem Policy and Management,
is founded at IIASA based on results of a study relating forest
conditions to pest propagation that has implications for forest
management policy throughout North America and Scandinavia.
1976
IIASA scientists warn the world about the dangers of climate
change and suggest pioneering solutions such as capturing and
storing carbon. IIASA was one of only two institutions worldwide
that, by the mid-1970s, already had an established research
program on climate change and policy.
1977
The first Young Scientists Summer Program is a huge success
and since 1977 IIASA has attracted over 1,500 talented young
scientists to spend a summer working with scholars from other
nations and disciplines. Many go on to take senior posts
in academia, business, and government.
7
IIASA publishes the first comprehensive, truly global
assessments of energy issues, resulting in the internationally
acclaimed report, Energy in a Finite World.
1982
An IIASA research team of chemists, biologists, mathematicians,
engineers, hydrologists, economists, computer specialists, and
managers completes a study on eutrophication and management
of Lake Balaton, central Europe’s largest lake. Its findings
influence water policy in Italy, Japan, the USA, and the USSR.
1983
Groundbreaking research by an IIASA scholar provides the
intellectual underpinnings for the later US Department
of Justice’s antitrust case against Microsoft. The findings
pioneered the modern approach to increasing returns which
shows how powerful firms can exploit the particular nature
of high-tech markets to the disadvantage of opponents
who offer better products.
1991
IIASA researchers complete the first consistent continent-wide
assessment of forest resources in Europe and the European
regions of the former Soviet Union, revealing the alarming
consequences of air pollution for European forests.
1986
1994
IIASA scholars publish Sustainable Development of the Biosphere,
which is quickly accepted by the science community as the core
scientific text on sustainable development.
IIASA’s Regional Acidification Information and Simulation (RAINS)
model underpins the agreement of 33 European governments to
reduce damaging emissions of sulfur dioxide.
1988
1995
In response to mounting tensions regarding global food issues,
IIASA creates an unprecedented computer model that links
national agricultural models. Named the Basic Linked System,
it becomes a practical tool for determining the effectiveness
of policies to eliminate hunger and the impacts of agricultural
trade liberalization.
Five IIASA scientists are chosen to be Lead Authors of the
Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. Since then, eleven IIASA scholars have
played leading roles in the IPCC’s third and fourth assessment
reports, which provide the world with the most scientifically
advanced, comprehensive, and rigorous analysis of the state
of climate change.
1989
IIASA’s scientific model of Europe’s acid rain problem is officially
adopted by the 28 countries of the Geneva Convention on
Transboundary Air Pollution as the main technical support for
renegotiation of the treaty. This is the first time that all parties to
a major international treaty agree to accept a single scientific model.
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1995
Funded by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank,
the RAINS model is extended to facilitate the analysis of sulfur
dioxide pollution in Asia and is presented to energy planners
and government officials in 18 Southeast Asian nations.
2002
The United Nations commissions IIASA scientists to analyze the
likely impacts of climate change on agriculture to 2080. The
influential report is published at the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg. It highlights the need to focus on
extending the mitigation scope of the Kyoto Protocol and put the
issue of adaptation to climate change on the global agenda of
international negotiations.
2004
1996
A second edition of the IIASA book The Future Population
of the World: What Can We Assume Today? is published.
It includes the first-ever probabilistic population scenarios
(predicting world population will probably never double again)
and new findings on population aging.
1998
The World Energy Council partners with IIASA in a unique study on
Global Energy Perspectives. This analyzes how current and near-term
energy decisions will have long-lasting implications throughout the
twenty-first century. The findings of the five-year study are presented
at the World Energy Congress in 1995 and 1998, and the results
published in a Cambridge University Press book in 1998.
2000
IIASA scientists and models play a leading role in preparing the
most comprehensive and sophisticated scenarios yet of greenhouse
gas emissions for the twenty-first century. The work is published as
the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change and Cambridge University Press in 2000.
2001
IIASA demographers are first to forecast, in a Nature article,
that the world population will peak in the twenty-first century
and then begin to decline.
2002
IIASA scientists complete the most comprehensive study
of Russian forests and land resources ever undertaken.
Results are presented to President Putin of Russia.
IIASA scientists reveal that undesirable genetic changes are
taking place in fish stocks as a result of commercial exploitation.
Documentation of these evolutionary changes could have
provided a valuable early warning signal of the collapse of
a fish stock such as the northern cod in the early 1990s.
2005
Disaster aid is often too little and too late. It also discourages
governments and individuals from taking advantage of the
high returns to preventive action. In a Science article, scholars
from IIASA’s Risk, Modeling and Society Program identified
several innovative approaches to free vulnerable countries
from dependence on unpredictable post- disaster assistance.
2007
IIASA scientists share the Nobel Peace Prize with authors
of the IPCC reports and Al Gore for “their efforts to build
up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made
climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures
that are needed to counteract such change.” They follow
in the footsteps of four Nobel Prize laureates who have
worked at IIASA: Tjalling Koopmans and Leonid Kantorovich
(Economics, 1975); Paul Crutzen (Chemistry, 1995); and
Thomas Schelling (Economics, 2005).
2008
IIASA has its most successful year to date in terms of scientific
publishing. The Institute’s researchers publish over 120 journal
articles according to two independent databases of peer-reviewed
literature (Web of Science and Scopus). Citations of IIASA’s work
also achieved a new record in 2008, with the Institute’s research
cited in over 2,500 journal articles according to Scopus.
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IIASA § Highlights 2009
Scientific Excellence
IIASA’s work is underpinned by high-quality science.
In 2009 IIASA scientists published over 110 articles in
peer-reviewed journals, made over 200 presentations,
and held editorships in over 55 academic journals.
LEAST-DEVELOPED NEED ADAPTATION ASSISTANCE NOW
Large-scale impacts on human development and
the environment in least-developed countries
will occur between now and 2030 unless there is
urgent international financial assistance to help
them adapt to climate-related extreme events.
This is the finding of research by IIASA, the
University of Cape Town, and six other partner
institutions in 2009 and recently published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
PNAS 107(4):1333–1337 (26 Jan 2010)
HIGHLY PUBLISHED AND CITED
In 2009 IIASA’s researchers published over 110 journal articles
recognized by two independent databases of peer-reviewed
literature (Web of Science and Scopus). The number of articles
is considerably higher than the 53 articles IIASA’s scientists
published on average every year since 1982. Citations of
IIASA articles have increased even more rapidly to over
3000 in 2009 according to Scopus.
EDITORSHIPS
Numerous IIASA scientists have been appointed
to editorships for peer-reviewed academic journals.
In 2009 IIASA researchers held editorships in 59 journals
ranging from Energy Economics to Climate Policy
to Environmental Research Letters to Technological
Forecasting and Social Change.
2050 EMISSIONS TARGETS TO LIMIT LONG-TERM CLIMATE CHANGE
Research between IIASA and the US National Center for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR), carried out in 2009 and
published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, links long-term climate policy targets to the shortand medium-term actions necessary to achieve them. Using
the IIASA energy modeling framework, the study identifies
critical mid-century emission thresholds that, if surpassed,
would make some long-term goals unachievable.
PNAS 107(3):1011–1016 (19 Jan 2010)
INNOVATIVE MODELS SHED NEW LIGHT ON FOOD-WEB STABILITY
An article published in Science addresses a persistent
challenge of theoretical ecology, namely, to understand how
the size and structure of ecological food webs affects their
stability. Resulting from collaboration between the Max Planck
Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Germany,
with IIASA’s Ulf Dieckmann and IIASA Council Vice-Chair
Simon Levin, the research reveals new rules for predicting
the structural features that make food webs more stable.
Science 325(5941):747–750 (7 Aug 2009)
10
FIXING A CRITICAL CLIMATE ACCOUNTING ERROR
An error in the accounting rules for bioenergy could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according
to an article in Science. Co-authored by prominent scientists
and land use experts, including IIASA’s Petr Havlik and
Michael Obersteiner, the article explains that the accounting rules used in the Kyoto Protocol treat all bioenergy as
carbon neutral, regardless of the source of the biomass,
which may cause large differences in net emissions.
Science 326(5952):527–528 (23 Oct 2009)
UN Photo / Paulo Filgueiras
ASSESSING GLOBAL NITROGEN FLOWS IN CROPLAND
Research in 2009 led by IIASA and Beijing Forestry
University shows that about 80 percent of African
countries are confronted with nitrogen (N) stress
or scarcity, which, along with poverty, causes
food insecurity and malnutrition. Published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
the study also indicates that globally, two-fifths
of N used in agriculture is lost to ecosystems,
with deleterious environmental effects.
PNAS 107(17):8035–8040 (27 Apr 2010)
ADVISORY BOARDS
Forty advisory boards have selected numerous IIASA
scientists to participate and bring high-quality scientific
evidence to a range of global, regional, and local
challenges. Most notably, these include IIASA’s
Nebojsa Nakicenovic membership of the
UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Group
on Energy and Climate Change (above),
and of the German Advisory Board
on Global Change (WBGU).
PRESENTATIONS
Unlike many universities, IIASA does
not divide the world into academic
disciplines, which is one reason why
audiences are eager to hear lectures by
IIASA researchers. In 2009 IIASA scientists
gave over 200 lectures. Audiences were diverse,
including scientists and entrepreneurs at the
World Resources Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
negotiators at the United Nation’s climate
change conference in Copenhagen, and
mathematics graduates in Moscow.
A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR CLIMATE RESEARCH AND ASSESSMENT
In Nature, an international team, including Keywan
Riahi and Nebojsa Nakicenovic, describes a new
approach for developing and applying integrated
‘scenarios’ in climate change, mitigation, impacts,
and adaptation research. The new framework
aims to enhance collaboration between scientists
and improve the accessibility of information to
decision makers.
Nature 463(7282):747–756 (11 Feb 2010)
11
International,
Interdisciplinary Research
International, interdisciplinary research teams
and the use of advanced scientific tools underpin
IIASA’s integrated approach to global challenges.
Distribution of iiasa researchers
During 2009 scientists from 40 countries conducted research at IIASA:
§ Argentina § Australia § Austria § Brazil § Canada § China § Costa Rica §
Czech Republic § Finland § France § Gabon § Germany § Greece § Hungary
§ India § Indonesia § Ireland § Italy § Japan § Republic of Korea § Mexico §
Montenegro § Nepal § Netherlands § Nigeria § Norway § Pakistan § Philippines
§ Poland § Russia § Slovakia § Spain § Sweden § Switzerland § Syria § Thailand §
Ukraine § United Kingdom § United States § Vietnam
Of the scientists who worked at IIASA in 2009, 37 percent were social scientists,
35 percent were natural scientists and engineers, and 28 percent were
mathematicians and researchers from other disciplines.
12
Global research at the
regional and national levels
IIASA translates its global models and
research into policy-relevant information
at the regional and national levels—from
advising on cutting greenhouse gases in the
European Union to helping China and India
manage major development challenges.
In 2009 IIASA completed its GAINS model
which estimates the extent to which
greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced and
at what cost. By analyzing emission sources,
together with over 300 options for mitigating
emissions across a large number of countries,
GAINS can identify strategies that are able
to minimize the collective costs of tackling
climate change. Many countries—currently
Australia, Canada, the 27 member states of
the European Union, Japan, New Zealand,
Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and
the United States—are now able to use the
model to examine the national implications
of any proposed international agreement
to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Following a worldwide assessment by IIASA,
the financial vulnerability to extreme weather
events of countries, including Bolivia, India,
and South Africa, has been recognized. The
IIASA research, published in the World Bank’s
World Development Report 2010, identifies
the countries most in need of financial
contingency planning to increase their
resilience to future disasters.
IIASA helps countries prepare for future
demographic changes. China currently
benefits from having a relatively small
population of dependents (children and
the elderly) compared with the working
age population, but what does the future
hold? Chinese researchers from Peking
University’s Demographic Research Institute
collaborated with IIASA demographers to
forecast China’s demographic challenges
using state-of-the-art IIASA techniques.
The probabilistic population projections
show that the demographic window of
opportunity will soon disappear, to be
followed by severe population burdens on
China’s social and economic structures.
These are just a few examples of the ways
in which IIASA global research is being
applied at the regional and national levels,
and as a result of which IIASA is developing
international networks and building bridges
between countries through science.
13
RESID OIL
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Sharing the burden to cut greenhouse gas emissions One of the key issues facing the mining
current
GAS
IIASA researches today’s global challenges to provide
decision makers with the evidence and tools to make
better-informed, more cost-effective policy decisions.
Much of the advice stems from the results of complex,
scientific models and data analysis.
RENEW-WC
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Policy-Relevant Research
refinery
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negotiations for a post-2012 agreement on climate change is how much industrialized
crude
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(Annex I) countries are willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse
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Only a
deal that is fair in sharing the burden of cutting GHG emissions, reflectsnat.gas
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and minimizes the collective cost of tackling climate change will be sustainable.
meth ng
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In 2009 IIASA launched a scientific tool, known as the GAINS Mitigation
Efforts Calculator, to openly compare the alternative schemes for sharing the burden
of cutting GHG emissions among industrialized countries. The calculator queries
the IIASA GAINS (Greenhouse gas—Air pollution INteractions and Synergies) model,
renewables with
which analyzes all six greenhouse gases included in the Kyoto Protocol, covers all
carbon emissions
anthropogenic sources included in the emission reporting of UNFCCC Annex I countries,
(renew_WC)
and considers around 300 different national mitigation options.
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(renew_OC)
The model was recently reviewed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development which concluded: “The only prominent international model renewables
of mitigationwithout
carbon emissions
costs which provides sufficient country detail to form a basis for understanding
comparability in the negotiating context is the GAINS model produced by IIASA.”
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http://gains.iiasa.ac.at
Sustainable Energy Supply The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the sole
UN agency building capacity in overall energy planning, and over the past few years
has trained and advised numerous energy planning departments in countries across
the globe. In support of such activity the IAEA adopted IIASA’s MESSAGE (Model for
Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact), enhanced
it to reflect specific conditions of developing countries, and, more importantly, added
an interface to facilitate its use by energy analysts. The Agency has also developed
an extensive training program, including distance learning, to train energy analysts in
developing countries. The IAEA has distributed MESSAGE to more than 70 countries,
where it is being used to formulate and evaluate alternative energy supply options
for a country or region, taking into account the constraints the country faces.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/ENE/model/message.html
0.15
Planning for Disaster On average two cyclones hit Madagascar every three years.
The immediate cost of helping victims and repairing critical infrastructure is often
huge and can overwhelm the ability of the government to finance the recovery process.
“During the project, IIASA’s CATSIM model helped Madagascar’s finance ministry
explore the design of a national disaster reserve fund and a stand-by credit facility with
a multilateral finance institution contingent on a severe disaster occurring,” explained
Alexander Lotsch, who led the project for the World Bank. “CATSIM helped local planners
make more informed decisions and provided a framework to improve the government’s
disaster risk management practices.”
0.12
Billion US$
In 2009 IIASA collaborated with the World Bank and the Malagasy government
to better prepare the island’s finances for disaster. They applied IIASA’s interactive
CATastrophe SIMulation (CATSIM) model to assess the consequences of natural disasters
for public finances and the benefits of hedging these risks via risk financing mechanisms.
 Financing gap
 Bond credit
 Multilateral finance institutions (MFI)
 Domestic credit
 Assistance
0.09
0.06
0.03
0
11
16
21
14
26
Return
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/RMS/Projects/Risk_Management.html
Photo © Steveheap | Dreamstime.com
Deforestation in the Congo Basin Starting in 2009, a new World Bank–sponsored project
aims to find out what is likely to drive deforestation in the Congo River Basin over
the next 10–20 years. The Basin is home to the second-largest contiguous block
of tropical forest in the world, and both a carbon-sink and rainfall provider for
the countries within and around it. Yet the forests are under increasing pressure
from the expansion of agriculture, mining, and oil extraction, among others.
“We wanted to better understand the drivers of deforestation; this would help us and
the international community to define appropriate incentives to reduce deforestation,”
said Carole Megevand, the leader of the project at the World Bank. “And we identified
IIASA’s GLObal BIomass Optimization Model (GLOBIOM) as a very appropriate tool to
help us achieve our aims.”
GLOBIOM integrates the agricultural, bioenergy, and forestry sectors in order to
give policy advice on global and regional issues concerning land use competition
between the major land-based production sectors. The European Union and the
Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) also use the model.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/FOR/globiom.html
Climate Change and Europe’s Forests In 2009 the European Commission wanted to
analyze the implications of different accounting rules for a future international
climate change agreement. Different rules can dramatically change the outcome
in terms of the amount of credits or debits generated, as well as the incentives
for carbon sequestration and preservation.
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“We asked IIASA to use its Global Forest Model (G4M) to project future emissions
and removals of greenhouse gases from the EU land use sector and forests,” said
Oskar Larsson from the European Commission’s Directorate General on Climate Action.
“The model’s results helped us assess the implications of different accounting rules in 2020.”
G4M produces estimates for carbon emissions from deforestation and the
carbon sequestration potential through afforestation and the management of
existing forests, as well as the impacts of carbon incentives, and the supply of
timber and biomass for bioenergy.
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www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/FOR/models.html
Future Population Population projections are a key component in planning a country’s
policies from pensions to schooling to health. In 2008 IIASA published its third update
of probabilistic world population projections for 13 world regions. Since then IIASA
demographers have been training and supporting statisticians in countries from
Belarus to the United Kingdom to produce their own national probabilistic projections
by level of educational attainment using IIASA’s population modeling techniques.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/POP
Food Security In partnership with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization,
IIASA has developed the Global Agro-Ecological Zones Assessment (GAEZ) model
to produce a detailed global gridded inventory of agricultural yields and production.
Using this information in conjunction with estimated attainable yield potentials,
modelers can estimate yield gaps and production opportunities worldwide, not just
for today but for a range of different climate possibilities in the future. FAO and IIASA
have used the model to analyze food security for a range of countries and regions
from Bangladesh to China to southern Africa.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Research-GAEZ_Workshop
IDENTIFYING FINANCING NEEDS FOR MADAGASCAR
IIASA’s CATSIM model helped Madagascar’s finance ministry
identify options to reduce the impact of natural disasters on
the Malagasy economy. The graph shows results from CATSIM
which discovered the financing gap (orange area) Madagascar
could face for certain extreme events.
32
41
53
61
period of event
15
Capacity Building
IIASA offers two educational programs to help scientists
just beginning their career to build research skills and
international networks. It also runs a variety of workshops
to build capacity among policymakers and researchers
to use IIASA’s advanced research tools.
YOUNG SCIENTISTS SUMMER PROGRAM
Fifty-three young scientists from 22 countries took part in IIASA’s
Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) in 2009.
The Program, established in 1977, runs from June through August and
provides gifted young researchers with an opportunity to research
and produce a paper, for possible publication, on a theme related to
IIASA’s ongoing research on issues of global environmental, economic,
and social change. Each young scientist joins an IIASA program and
experiences first hand the atmosphere of interdisciplinary cooperation
in an international setting that typifies IIASA’s work.
Many of the young researchers made impressive scientific advances
during their stay. Most notably, Zachary Brown of Duke University,
USA, Gregor Kiesewetter of the University of Bremen, Germany, and
Christian Hilbe of the University of Vienna, Austria, were the recipients
of the 2009 Peccei and Mikhalevich Awards which are conferred for
outstanding research by YSSP participants (see right). The awards provide
the young scientists with the opportunity to return to IIASA for an
additional three months of research.
Peccei and Mikhalevich Award Winners
Peccei and Mikhalevich Awards are conferred
annually on two or three outstanding participants
in IIASA’s Young Scientists Summer Program.
The winners of the Peccei Awards for 2009 are
Zachary Brown of Duke University, USA, and
Gregor Kiesewetter of the University of Bremen,
Germany.
The 2009 Mikhalevich Award was presented
to Christian Hilbe of the University of Vienna,
Austria.
Commenting on the YSSP, Nobel Laureate Thomas C. Schelling has said:
“By bringing the world’s most promising young scientists to spend the
summer at IIASA, the Institute ensures the next generation of scientists
is even better equipped to solve the world’s problems.”
For the complete list of IIASA YSSP participants 2009, see page 26.
www.iiasa.ac.at/YSSP
16
POSTDOCTORAL PROGRAM
Fifteen postdoctoral fellows researched at IIASA in 2009. IIASA postdoctoral fellowships
offer research opportunities to talented individuals who have just received their doctorate
to engage in their research for one to two years within an IIASA research program or on
special topics closely related to IIASA’s research agenda.
The experience allows postdoctoral candidates to develop their knowledge and experience,
put together a network of contacts and associations, and build a reputation in research
circles. IIASA itself benefits from the influx of these creative and highly trained scientists
with their up-to-the-minute knowledge and youthful enthusiasm.
IIASA’s postdoctoral fellows are financed by IIASA, the Kempe Foundation in Sweden,
the Vienna Science and Technology Fund, and also as part of projects funded by the
European Union.
For a complete list of IIASA postdoctoral research fellows 2009, see page 27.
www.iiasa.ac.at/pdocs
Zachary Brown
Peccei Award winner
Zachary Brown of the Nicholas School of the
Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University,
USA, received a 2009 Peccei Award for his study
entitled “Modeling the simultaneous impacts of
insecticide and antimalarial resistance in malaria
control” that he completed during his three months
with IIASA’s Health and Global Change Project.
Brown is currently in his fourth year of a five-year
Ph.D. program in environmental and natural resource
economics at Duke University. His dissertation will
consist of three essays examining how methods
in natural resource and environmental economics
can be applied to malaria control, with a focus
on the dynamic control of mosquito vectors and
the management of insecticide resistance using
inter-temporal optimization methods.
Gregor Kiesewetter
Peccei Award winner
Christian Hilbe
Mikhalevich Award winner
Gregor Kiesewetter of the Institute of Environmental
Physics of the University of Bremen, Germany,
received a 2009 Peccei Award for his work in IIASA’s
Atmospheric Pollution & Economic Development
Program on “Assessing transport of particulate
matter pollution from Europe to the Arctic.”
Christian Hilbe of the Faculty of
Mathematics of the University of Vienna,
Austria, spent the summer with IIASA’s
Evolution and Ecology Program and received
the 2009 Mikhalevich Award for his work on
“Public-goods games under time pressure.”
Kiesewetter is a third-year Ph.D. student in the
atmospheric chemistry and physics group of
the University of Bremen. The title of his thesis
is “Data assimilation to study the inter-annual
variability of the polar ozone layer.” His current
research interests include the variability of the
ozone layer, chemistry–climate interaction,
stratosphere–troposphere coupling processes,
and atmospheric physics in the environmental
context in general.
Hilbe is a second-year Ph.D. student in the
biomathematics group of the University of
Vienna. His thesis deals with public-goods
games with incentives, in which players
may be rewarded or punished according
to their contributions to the public good.
His main fields of scientific interest include
game theory and its applications to biology
and economy.
WORKSHOPS
IIASA also builds capacity among researchers and policymakers
to make better use of IIASA’s scientific tools. For example in 2009,
25 policy advisors and national experts from Russia, Belarus, Moldova,
China, and nine Western European countries attended a hands-on training
workshop at IIASA on the use and application of its GAINS model.
This online tool informs the development of cost-effective strategies
to combat air pollution and climate change simultaneously.
IIASA provides a convenient venue for bringing together such
groups, including researchers and policymakers from around the
world. However, IIASA scientists often take their skills to particular
regions of research focus. For instance, in New Delhi in 2009,
IIASA researchers helped build capacity among Indian scientists
and decision makers to use strategic tools to better manage
disaster risk. In Nigeria, an IIASA researcher mentored scientists
to plan, implement, and summarize workshops on under-five
mortality, health systems, and primary health care.
17
IIASA § Research update
Private
actors
Environment & Natural Resources
Interna
Invest
Wealth can no longer be concentrated in just a few hands because, as shown by the
present financial crisis, that increases the vulnerability of all. And wealth itself will be
defined differently…In our quest to build financial and human capital, we have forgotten
that our environment and the services it provides are the most valuable resource we have.
Sets
auction
criteria
Buy REDD
allowances
via auctions
—Professor
—
Sten Nilsson, IIASA Options (Summer 2009, p. 23)
R
(coun
Atmospheric Pollution and Economic Development (APD)
APD work in 2009 focused mainly on policy applications of the GAINS tool and
on updating activity projections to reflect the recent economic crisis.
In this context, APD made available a free, interactive online calculator to help Annex I
countries compare mitigation efforts for climate change commitments to 2020. Interactive
Web software was released in April, enabling open access to all underlying country
databases—over 25,000 external downloads of result pages took place pre-Copenhagen.
APD also produced a series of reports to show that pledges on emission reductions by Annex I
countries fell considerably short of the 25–40 percent reduction recommended by the IPCC,
even against a background of reduced economic activity, which lowers GHG emissions.
GAINS analyses provided quantitative information to the European Commission to support
negotiations on the burden sharing of EU climate commitments and continued to be the
central analytical tool for The Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution.
APD staff presented research results to a wide range of international policy meetings
at different institutions and organized side events at UNFCCC climate meetings in
Bonn, Barcelona, and Copenhagen.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/APD
Background photo © Jean Schweitzer | Dreamstime.com
Ahead of the December 2009 Copenhagen negotiations for a post-2012 climate change
agreement, APD implemented its GAINS model for 36 UNFCCC Annex I countries to
determine country GHG mitigation potentials and costs and to estimate the co-benefits
for air pollution. GAINS, endorsed by the OECD as “the only … basis for understanding
comparability in the negotiating context,” was used to achieve an open and transparent
comparison of alternative mitigation schemes and help identify mutually agreeable targets.
GAINS Mitigation Efforts Calculator In this sample screensho
pledges made by Annex I countries by August 2009 to reduce
the efforts of each country in terms of total and percentage em
(total, per capita, or as a percentage of GDP) or in terms of ca
Land Use Change and Agriculture (LUC)
Biofuels and the need to devise coordinated policies and regulations for sustainable biofuel expansion achieving
substantial GHG emission reductions without exacerbating environmental degradation and food insecurity, were a major
LUC research theme in 2009. At CSD14 in May in New York, LUC released the widely acclaimed 200-page Biofuels and
Food Security, at a time when high feedstock demand spurred by ambitious national biofuel targets and mandates,
soaring food prices, and global economic crisis plunged an additional 100–200 million people into undernourishment.
Ahead of the UN World Summit on Food Security in November, LUC conducted an integrated agro-ecological and
socioeconomic spatial global assessment for FAO on inter-linkages of targeted biofuel developments, impacts of climate
change, and food security. For the EU ELOBIO project, LUC concluded that yield gap reduction and sustainable crop and
livestock intensification in less-developed South American and sub-Saharan African countries, could create win-win situations
for energy security, reduced GHG emissions, and rural development, without jeopardizing food and environmental security.
Agro-ecological Assessment
for the Transition of the
Agricultural Sector in Ukraine
Methodology and Results for Baseline Climate
Kateryna Gumeniuk, Natalia Mishchenko,
Günther Fischer, and Harrij van Velthuizen
LUC worked with regional partners: Ukrainian Institute of Economics and Forecasting on agriculture and rural transformation
in transition economies, and Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy, on water scarcity and agro-environmental impacts in the
context of China’s rapid economic growth. For the EU CATSEI project LUC focused on developing an innovative modeling
approach to develop robust strategies for livestock production expansion in China, consistent with both rapid demand
growth and environment security goals.
With support from FAO, LUC completed a major update and expansion (GAEZ 2009) of the 2002 Global Agro-ecological
Assessment for Agriculture in the 21st century. A Web-based data query system, to be released in 2010, provides access
to terabytes of results for current climate, historical years since 1960, and future climate for the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s.
IIASA
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC
18
Governments
Domestic
compliance
demand
Invest
ational Emission
tment Reserve
Sell REDD
allowances
FORESTRY (FOR)
Reselling
revenue
The Forestry Program worked on some 30 projects on the global impacts of the
forest sector and sustainable land-use management in 2009.
Carbon
market
Reselling criteria
Sets and controls
MRV standards
International Emission
Reference Scenario
Coordination Center
REDD provider
ntry, project level)
Development
and validation
of reference levels
redd fINANCING MECHANISM
Methodological findings of FOR included modification and introduction of new modules
to global models (GLOBIOM, G4M, FeliX) aiming for systems integration of, for example,
ecology, global change, economics, trade, livestock, irrigation; introduction of a multi-sensor
remote sensing concept in modeling and analysis; and development of new approaches
for assessing uncertainties of fuzzy systems. FOR began introducing optimization principles
into forest models, launched a new forest thinning model, and pioneered a microbial model
based on optimal acclimation.
FOR used integrated modeling to analyze: drivers of deforestation and their impact
and the costs of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)
globally and for the Congo Basin; biomass and primary production of forests on a global
and continental level; biomass streams, including waste and residues, from EU27 forestry
and agriculture; potential and use of renewable energies, such as Jatropha for biodiesel
production in India; and regional hunger hotspots in sub-Saharan Africa. FOR also
demonstrated ways of providing Terrestrial Ecosystems Full Greenhouse Gas
Accounting at levels of uncertainties and costs acceptable for policymaking.
FOR introduced several new online global land cover validation tools
(GEO-Wiki.org), and developed a user-friendly graphical
interface for FOR models and an educational tool
on the impact of uncertainty in emission trading
under the Kyoto Protocol.
Phenotypic
case studies
FOR participated in ten COP15 events in
Copenhagen and organized a number
of events, including a side event at
the XIII World Forest Congress.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/FOR
EVOLUTION AND ECOLOGY (EEP)
EEP’s continuous investment
into research on fisheriesinduced evolution is attracting
increasing attention among
scientists charged with providing
advice to fisheries managers.
ot, the user has analyzed an optimistic interpretation of
GHG emissions. Note that the user can easily compare
mission reductions, in terms of mitigation costs
arbon price.
Genetic
analysis
Oversight of
integrated
case studies
Eco-genetic
models
EEP’s program leader is now
Coordination,
co-chair of the Working Group on
integration,
Fisheries-induced Evolution (WGEVO) of
dissemination
the International Council for the Exploration
of the Sea, which in 2009 was upgraded to
a permanent status because of its expert merits.
In 2009 EEP published specifications of a novel methodological platform—eco-genetic
modeling—to help predict the future ecology and evolution of exploited fish stocks,
understand observed past changes, and evaluate the merits of alternative future
management strategies. The new tools are being applied to case studies on particular
marine and freshwater stocks, and help address basic open questions regarding
ecological and evolutionary aspects of recovery in collapsed fish stocks.
The program is also developing new methods for integrating socioeconomic dimensions
such as employment into the quantitative analysis of fishery systems. In the past,
such assessments have often restricted attention to one biological component of
these systems. EEP’s new approach allows zones of joint stakeholder satisfaction
to be identified within the decision space of fisheries managers.
EEP’s continued to pursue research on the evolution of cooperation in joint enterprises,
a highly interdisciplinary research focus embracing issues as diverse as governing the
commons in ecosystem management and the evolution of social norms in cooperative
interactions among humans. In September 2009, a high-profile conference at IIASA
brought together more than 120 international experts in this area.
An article in Science reported on the discovery of two new general rules
for assessing the stability of ecological food webs.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/EEP
19
Population & Society
If Africa fails to develop rapidly, we can expect more conflict and more humanitarian
crises together with the expected negative consequences of climate change for
Global Climate Change
African livelihood and health. It does not matter whether Europe needs
or wants migrants with certain qualifications; Europe must expect that
many more will arrive at its gates, many simply trying to survive.
—Professor
—
Wolfgang Lutz, IIASA Options (Summer 2009, p. 13)
GHG emissions
WORLD POPULATION (POP)
Three major studies were Program highlights in 2009. POP’s new 2009 projections
to 2300 showed the feasibility of a substantial long-term decline in world population
size happening simultaneously with further improvements in health and life expectancy.
A new innovative study on the use of additional life years showed that, on average,
life expectancies without severe activity limitations at age 65 in high-income OECD
countries could increase by around 2.7 years to around 2050. The latest POP analysis of
global population aging trends, “The coming acceleration of global population ageing,”
was also published in the prestigious journal, Nature.
Two major projects, based on personal grants from the European Research Council
to Wolfgang Lutz and Vegard Skirbekk, respectively, got under way in 2009.
In “Forecasting Societies’ Adaptive Capacities to Climate Change” (FutureSoc), preparations
for a new set of population projections were made, involving more than 1,000 experts
worldwide in assessments of future trends in fertility, mortality, and migration. Strategies
were also defined for “Age and Cohort Change,” which will investigate human capital, skills,
and work performance along with beliefs and attitudes in Europe to 2050.
A POP study showing the world’s most rapid fertility decline over the past two decades
in the Islamic Republic of Iran, associated with massive increases in female education,
has important positive implications for governance quality and human rights in that
country. A paper by Wolfgang Lutz in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
makes a strong case for giving absolute priority to education and health issues in all
areas of poverty eradication and global development. These ideas are being developed
in a series of speeches and events in academic and policy settings.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/POP
Consumption
Technology
Human
Innovation
By age, sex,
level of education,
place of residence,
and household
structure
Closing the full circle
of population and climate change
RISK AND VULNERABILITY (RAV)
In its fourth year the Risk and Vulnerability Program (RAV) continued to work on adaptation and resilience of societies and
ecosystems to the stresses of global change. RAV’s contribution to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2010 showed
the high potential costs of extreme weather events for many small economies and the need for financial contingency planning
to increase future resilience. For the project “Risk to Resilience,” sponsored by the UK Department for International Development,
RAV led an assessment of disaster risks, climate change, and the costs and benefits of reducing risks in India, Nepal, and Pakistan.
RAV and partners examined the benefits of consolidating local index-based insurance systems to operate at the national
scale. IIASA researchers also examined the task of educating farmers about how such insurance operates. These projects
have been published in Global Environmental Change and Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change.
RAV’s leader Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer convinced climate negotiators at COP15 in Copenhagen to include
insurance instruments in the negotiation text.
In collaboration with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, RAV examined the risk management issues
associated with the expansion of large-scale renewable energy in Europe and North Africa, the results of which
were widely reported in the news media.
RAV staff collaborated with EU water policymakers and scientists to create scenarios of the future of
water quality and quantity in Europe up to the year 2050, probing assumptions about what trends might
result if market regulation, security, or sustainability affect the future trajectory of the European Union.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/RAV
20
Background photo © Knud Nielsen | Dreamstime.com
Regional effects on:
– temperature
– humidity
– extreme events (storms)
– sea-level rise
Differential vulnerability
Livelihood
Health/Mortality
Migration
POPULATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE (PCC)
In 2009—the final year of IIASA’s Population and Climate Change Program—the focus was
on completing work in three areas that aim to better inform the climate policy community.
In the demography, energy, and emissions project, a global analysis of demographic effects
on emissions using a nine-region global version of the PET model was undertaken.
This showed the significant effects of plausible differences in population size on future
global greenhouse gas emissions, and of other demographic changes such as aging and
urbanization on regional emissions. Three IIASA Interim Reports were completed on:
(1) the economic and energy use behavior of different types of households in Brazil,
China, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and the United States; (2) the aggregate economic
and trade behavior of economies in sectoral detail; and (3) population projections
produced using consistent scenarios of population size change, aging, urbanization,
and distribution of population by household type.
Under the uncertainty and learning project, a study on uncertainty in climate
sensitivity was published (in Geophysical Research Letters) concluding that
current estimates of uncertainty in climate sensitivity may be underestimated
because of the insufficient account taken of uncertainty in some forcing factors,
particularly forcing due to sulfate aerosols.
The medium-term strategies project investigates options for climate policy
strategies over the next 30–50 years that help link potential long-term
climate change targets to short-term actions.
Results of a collaborative project with the Energy (ENE) Program
to analyze mid-century emission reduction targets and their
implications for longer-term climate change goals received
significant media attention.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/PCC
n Population
No education
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
PROCESSES OF INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION (PIN)
A strengthened and rejuvenated PIN Steering Committee undertook a
series of international conferences in 2009. This included: a two-day workshop
on Mediating Identity Conflicts, at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada, attended
by 120 professors, students and practitioners; and the IIASA Summer Workshop in June
on Negotiation on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) involving eminent
practitioners with proven experience in international negotiations related to the CTBT.
The latter is part of the International Scientific Negotiation Studies (SNS) project,
which aims to evaluate the adequacy of negotiations to establish and implement
the verification regime through an international coordination effort.
Helping to expand the PIN network in South America, PIN represented IIASA
at the 11th International Congress on Integration, Borders and Globalization,
held in November in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, presenting two papers related to
migration and climate change. PIN organized a simulation of the climate change
negotiations at the COP15 summit on climate change at De La Salle University,
Manila, Philippines, in July and again in June for the YSSP participants at IIASA.
Two issues of PINPoints appeared in 2009: one on A Stronger Global
Focus, the other on Knowledge Diplomacy. The book, Negotiated Risks—
International Talks on Hazardous Issues (Avenhaus & Sjöstedt), was published in
spring. PIN organized a panel on “Negotiation with Terrorists” at the annual convention
of the International Studies Association in New York in February 2009. This was followed
by the publication of an IIASA Policy Brief, Negotiating with Terrorists: A Mediator’s Guide.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/PIN
21
Energy & Technology
In many countries, concerns over adequate, reliable, and affordable energy supplies
feature prominently on the national security agenda. At the same time, energy system
vulnerability is increasing—more so in poorer countries—with rising demand,
geographic concentration of key resources such as oil, and energy systems increasingly
operating near their critical loads because of underinvestment and poor maintenance.
—Luis
— Gomez-Echeverri & Martin Offutt, IIASA Options (Summer 2009, p. 15)
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS (DYN)
In 2009 DYN pursued three research areas. In Assessment of Dynamical Systems,
new application-oriented methods created a specific “IIASA niche” in applied mathematics,
with a focus on the theory of control, dynamical systems, and dynamic games. A new branch
of mathematical optimal control theory, developed for infinitely long durations, showed
the effects of random price shocks on economies. A further project showed how countries
can reach a mutually acceptable decision without exchanging individual information.
Two other research areas linked DYN methodology from and to IIASA’s applied in-house
research. Economic Dynamics focused on understanding the key features of a country’s optimal
long-term investment policy, providing forecasts for Austria, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Another project viewed the emergence of new products as a mechanism for extending market
capacity. Transportation infrastructure was also analyzed as an important driving force of
national economic growth, with tests for France and Finland illustrating a potential for policy
recommendations. Climate change–driven natural catastrophes and growth project, a joint
GGI–DYN project, concluded that today’s policy decisions strongly depend on the expected
size of future GDP losses from random natural hazards. Another study suggested optimal
capital taxation rules for economic development in an economy where labor unions set wages.
Ecological Dynamics and Environmental Management extended previous findings on
mutualistic relations to an illustrative analysis of natural gas pipeline flows through Eurasia
and economic input–output tables. A cost-benefit analysis of Russia’s participation in
the Kyoto Protocol project provided insights for the post-Kyoto context. Analysis of aqua
farm management under ecological constraints showed that water quality in a reservoir
is strongly dependent on the distribution of plankton biomass in the farm area.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/DYN
GLOBAL ENERGY ASSESSMENT (GEA)
During 2009 the GEA continued to make significant progress with an eye to delivering many of its
key products and policy tools in 2011. Analysts completed much of the analysis and writing for the
“second-order draft” of the major analytical report that will be submitted to the external peer-review process.
The final report is intended to inform decisions by policymakers who must address the global energy-linked
challenges identified by the international community—alleviation of energy poverty, mitigation of
environmental impacts, and provision of secure, reliable supplies of energy. The challenges of the GEA
are to assess the available energy resources and technologies and ways of combining technologies and
resources into modern energy systems within the context of sustainability. The work in 2009 included
further in-depth analysis and an evaluation of cross-cutting themes such as land use, urbanization,
and lifestyles that will impact the design of policy packages that simultaneously meet objectives related
to economic and social development, environmental protection, and security. In June a three-day
plenary meeting of all GEA analysts was held to further this integrative work of the Assessment.
Overall, the GEA participants continue to promote dialog among the intended audience in
various venues, including invited talks aimed both at informing stakeholders of preliminary
findings and at being informed of the needs of policymakers. These events, including several
held at COP15 in December, will help ensure the relevance of GEA research to ongoing
international negotiations.
www.GlobalEnergyAssessment.org
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ENERGY (ENE)
In 2009 ENE finalized a number of climate-change related research activities. Most
importantly, ENE finalized its work on the highest of the four representative concentration
(RCP) pathways that will be the analytical backbone of the climate change projections of
the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The first projections of their kind, the RCPs provide full spatial coverage of land-cover changes
and greenhouse gas emissions, both in terms of historical projections from pre-industrial
times and to 2300. The IPCC–RCP data dissemination to the international climate research
community is hosted by ENE jointly with TNT through an interactive Web database.
Another major ENE study addressed the persistent problem of linking long-term climate
policy targets to the short- and medium-term actions necessary to achieve them. The study
was presented at COP15 in Copenhagen and attracted widespread media attention.
Jointly with other leading Integrated Assessment Teams, ENE completed the Energy
Modeling Forum Study 22 in 2009. The study explores the implications of different
international climate policy architectures, including globally fragmented approaches
and incomplete participation of major emitters. The results are of particular importance
to climate policymaking, given the recent failure of the COP process to define binding
regional GHG emission reduction targets.
ENE continued its involvement in the Global Energy Assessment (GEA), and initiated an
elaborate participatory scenario development process between GEA lead authors and
ENE researchers to develop an initial set of transformational energy scenarios.
Collaborative research with specific focus on development of regional modeling tools
and scenarios took place between ENE and IIASA’s National Member Organization (NMO)
countries Japan, China, and India.
For both ENE and GEA 2009 was a highly successful year in engaging a range of key
stakeholders from government and civil society, including the energy industry, through
one-on-one consultations with key decision makers, presentations at international
conferences, and a presence on national and international advisory bodies.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/ENE
TRANSITIONS TO NEW TECHNOLOGIES (TNT)
There were a number of TNT research highlights for 2009 which are summarized below:
A highly successful workshop on the Economics of Technologies to Combat Global
Warming was co-organized by Nebojsa Nakicenovic and Bill Nordhaus and held in
Snowmass, Colorado; papers will be published as a special issue of Energy Economics.
A summary of the workshop convened by TNT in 2008 on methane hydrates was published in
2009 in Environmental Research Letters, receiving extensive quotations and media coverage.
TNT developed a new interactive Web-based software and data interface tool to document
the new representative concentration pathways (RCPs) scenarios being developed for the
Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
(see also ENE, above). These tools are now available as a service to the
wider scientific community on IIASA’s Web site.
Important progress on two knowledge modules (KMs) on technology innovation policy
and on urbanization for the Global Energy Assessment (GEA) were achieved in 2009 with
second-order drafts finalized and circulated for expert review. Final KMs will be produced
in 2010, subjected to an extensive IPCC-style peer review process, and final reports published
toward the end of 2010. The GEA KM on technology innovation policy synthesizes in
particular a set of novel case studies with respect to lessons learned on success and failures of
innovation policies. The KM on urbanization presents and reviews in particular new data and
modeling approaches for the analysis of sustainability transition policies of urban systems.
Two multi-year historical empirical research projects were brought to first fruition with
first papers published. One case study is on the dynamics of technology costs illustrating
cases of negative learning effects. The second case study is on scaling patterns of
a wide range of energy technologies that exhibit remarkable consistency between
market size and their diffusion dynamics.
Finally, two externally sponsored research grants were also received in 2009:
the European Union–funded MONITOR project that assesses scenario and technology
trends relevant for global aviation, and a grant to support TNT input to the work of
the policy-influential German Advisory Board on Global Change (WBGU).
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/TNT
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Institute-Wide Research and Special Projects
IIASA uses the best research, databases, and analytical tools to examine
problems from multiple perspectives, including drivers, impacts, and solutions.
This “integrated approach” crosses both national and academic disciplinary boundaries
and ensures that problems are studied in their complexity and entirety,
rather than as isolated issues.
—IIASA
—
Options (Winter 2009, p. 6)
INTEGRATED MODELING ENVIRONMENT (IME)
Progress in 2009 was significant in terms of furthering IME’s strategic goal to build capacity to meet IIASA’s
growing needs for integrated modeling support where commonly known methodology and/or general-purpose
modeling tools are inadequate. IME also pursued its long-term aim of strengthening IIASA’s capabilities
and competitive advantage in modeling complex problems.
The Web site for interactive multiple-criteria analysis of discrete alternatives, implemented in 2008,
was enhanced in 2009 to provide the functionality needed for specification of diverse problems, and also
for use by those not experienced in analytical methods. It was successfully used for capacity building with
the Indian NMO and YSSP participants, and it is now open for research and educational purposes.
In collaboration with IIASA’s LUC, FOR, and APD programs, as well as colleagues from partner institutions,
IME advanced methods for effective treatment of irreducible uncertainties and design of robust solutions
that have a stable performance with respect to multiple indicators characterizing social, economic,
environmental, and safety criteria.
In particular, IME collaborated with LUC on the design and implementation of robust solutions
for risk-adjusted planning of sustainable agricultural development in China and Ukraine.
Using data from Ukraine, new models and methods were developed for multicriteria assessment
of food security under uncertainty. With APD, FOR, and LUC, IME proposed and analyzed
an integrated model for designing robust CO2 emission trading under uncertainties and
environmental safety constraints, using data from European countries, Russia, and the USA.
IME also advanced the research on catastrophe bond pricing and, using newly assembled data
on the typhoon risk in China, developed and tested a new model to support bond pricing.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/IME
HEALTH AND GLOBAL CHANGE (HGC)
In 2009 HGC’s main focus was on establishing itself as a center of excellence for systems modeling approaches
to health, with an emphasis on applied policy work. Among its areas of interest and substantive expertise are:
infectious disease, including malaria, influenza, and TB; linkages between health and poverty in the developing world;
urbanization and health; external causes of death (suicide, homicide, accidents); and globalization and health.
A major focus for HGC in 2009 was to strengthen its international network through collaborations with various research
and policy organizations. With the Institute for Economic Growth in Delhi, HGC engaged in model-based research on
health and poverty in India and implemented a training workshop for mid-ranking Indian researchers on micro-simulation
modeling approaches in economics and the social sciences. HGC scientist Landis MacKellar chaired the ICSU Planning
Committee on Health in the Changing Urban Environment, tasked with producing a global science plan in this area.
HGC scientist Clara Cohen is co-organizing—with the Centre for the Health of Societies in Transition of the University of
South Stockholm—a major international workshop on the public health problem of suicide in Eastern Europe and the CIS.
Landis MacKellar was responsible for evaluations of EC cooperation strategy in Vietnam, Lao PDR, and the ASEAN region,
producing evaluation reports and giving briefings in Hanoi, Vientiane, Jakarta, and Brussels. From September, he was team leader
of the continuing mid-term review of the EC Thematic Programme on Migration and Asylum. He provided advisory services
for pension system development in Armenia (financed by USAID) and India (financed by the Asian Development Bank).
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/HGC
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GREENHOUSE GAS INITIATIVE (GGI)
GGI is the largest-ever inter-program collaborative research effort at IIASA,
involving more than two dozen researchers from eight IIASA Programs.
During 2009 APD, LUC, and FOR conducted a modeling exercise to assess the co-benefits of integrating
nitrogen management with greenhouse gas mitigation and climate change adaptation under an extension
of the Integrated Nitrogen Management in China (INMIC) project. Broadly, the study estimates that an
integrated nitrogen management approach for China could increase agricultural production by up to
50 percent while reducing N2O emissions by 25 percent over the business-as-usual case.
A GGI assessment of investment strategies into mitigation technologies analyzed the importance of biomass-based
power-generation technologies under socioeconomic and climate uncertainties, and generated three papers for publication.
An ongoing analysis of policy pathways to human development and implications for GHG emissions assessed how
marginal investments in different public sectors (education, health, energy access, water infrastructure) could
affect the level of development in India by 2030 under the Human Development Index (HDI).
A project exploring geoengineering (or climate engineering) research using stratospheric sulfur injections to halt
global warming once other mitigation efforts have been exhausted was considered as a possible method for limiting warming
caused by overshoot. Researchers from PCC, RAV, ENE, and APD took part and used a variety of IIASA modeling tools.
Two highly topical questions concerning climate-change adaptation in the policy and modeling communities were assessed, namely:
What climate change adaptation options are robust? and How can adaptation be taken into account in integrated climate-change
modeling? The analysis focused on the agricultural sector in India and Nepal, which face high risks from weather extremes.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/GGI
Population,
economic growth,
incomes
Economic–demographic
module
Livestock sector
N in manure
Feed demand
by agricultural
commodity
Demand,
consumption by
agricultural commodity
Grazing: NH 3, N 2O
Housing: NH3
Manure management: NH 3, N 2O
Runoff: N2O (indirect)
Crop production
N applied to soil
Soil: NH3, N2O (& indirect N2O)
Crop uptake of N
Modeling the release of nitrogen
A large part of nitrogen fertilizer applied in agriculture
is released into the environment, cascading through diverse
environmental pools, for example, atmospheric emissions
and leaching to surface or groundwater. To create robust
nitrogen management strategies, existing schemes of
nitrogen release (see figure, left) can be used as a basis for
modeling the loss of agriculturally derived nitrogen compounds
along different pathways using spatially explicit knowledge
of animal and crop production. The figure comes from a
July 2009 IIASA paper on assessment and mitigation of
nitrogen pollution from agriculture in China, published
in Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment .
Excess N
N leached (& indirect N2O)
Water Activities
Research related to water cuts across a number of programs at IIASA.
With agriculture being the largest water user worldwide, LUC was one of six prominent partners
in the EU-funded CATSEI project, which aimed to support policymakers in developing robust strategies
for expansion of Chinese agricultural production consistent with food, water, and environmental
security goals. The CATSEI team developed a detailed county-specific database that includes information
on population, agricultural activities, water resources, and constraints in around 3,000 locations
for the 1997–2006 period.
Integrated Nitrogen Management in China (INMIC), an ongoing collaborative effort between LUC, APD,
and FOR under the GGI umbrella, supports integrated planning of allocation and production regimes of crops
and livestock in China and addresses the dilemma between the inevitable production intensification resulting from
the economic transition in China and the need to preserve local air, water, and soil quality. Research results point to
agricultural practices that could achieve a trade-off between the benefits of economic development and reduction
of both active nitrogen emissions and water pollution caused by nitrogen leaching from fertilizers to groundwater.
For the EU-funded SCENES project, LUC worked with stakeholders to develop new innovative methodologies
for quantifying national-scale scenario projections of water-cycle driving forces in Europe.
A LUC team looked at how to improve yields in semi-arid zones through water management techniques
such as rainfall harvesting and soil moisture management.
RAV research in 2009 broadly covered the theme of water and resilience. Research continued
on adapting to climate change impacts in the Tisza River Basin, understanding the influences on
productivity in chronically flooding landscapes, and governance of water and other resource systems.
www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/WAT
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IIASA § Staff
Young Scientists
Since 1977 over 1500 young scientists from 77 countries have
developed interdisciplinary research skills and joined a network
of international researchers by participating in IIASA’s
Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP).
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IIASA YSSP Participants 2009
1 Zakarya Al Zalak, Syria 2 Benjamin Allen, USA 3 Muhammad Asif,
Pakistan 4 Erica Bickford, USA 5 Carl Boettiger, USA 6 Oleksandra Borodina,
Ukraine 7 Zachary Brown, USA 8 Benjamin Bryant, USA 9 Zoe Chafe, USA
10 Samrat Chatterjee, India 11 Vasileios Dakos, Greece 12 Lin Fan, China
13 Sapana Gupta, India 14 Tomoko Hasegawa, Japan 15 Constanze Haug, Germany
16 Christian Hilbe, Austria 17 Min Hong, China 18 Michael Hüttner, Germany
19 Faheem Iqbal, Pakistan 20 Marta Jankowska, USA 21 Marieke Jesse, Netherlands
22 Abdul Jilani, Pakistan 23 Gregor Kiesewetter, Austria 24 Luciana Kindl da Cunha, Brazil
25 Marie Christine Lasco, Philippines 26 Courtney Lee, USA 27 Derek Lemoine, USA
28 Myroslava Lesiv, Ukraine 29 Wei Li, China 30 Magnus Lindh, Sweden 31 Elke Loichinger,
Germany 32 Eduardo Maeda, Brazil 33 Aldo Martinez Pinanez, Argentina 34 Lise Marty, France
35 David McCollum Jr., USA 36 Donald Midoko Iponga, Gabon 37 Goran Mihelcic, Germany
38 Kazuyoshi Nakano, Japan 39 Keshav Paudel, Nepal 40 Emma Paulsson, Sweden
41 Irina Petrenko, Russia 42 Franziska Strauss, Austria 43 Margarita Strelkova, Russia
44 Patrick Sullivan, USA 45 Daisuke Takahashi, Japan 46 Ikechukwu Umejesi, Nigeria
47 Navarun Varma, India 48 Sinisa Vukovic, Montenegro 49 Jun Wan, China 50 Lei Wang,
China 51 Ekbordin Winijkul, Thailand 52 Yun Wu, China 53 Lai Zhang, China
www.iiasa.ac.at/YSSP
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Postdoctoral Research Fellows
In 2009 fifteen postdoctoral scholars gained hands-on research experience
at IIASA, while enriching the Institute’s intellectual environment
Dr. Jason J. Blackstock (Canada)
is focusing on evaluating the scientific, political, and economic
implications of climate engineering (geoengineering) concepts aimed
at limiting the negative consequences of climate change
caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr. Christopher Doll (United Kingdom)
is carrying out research on the production of socioeconomic datasets from
night-time light satellite imagery and how they can be combined with other
data to help answer fundamental questions concerning sustainable
development and the human dimensions of global change.
Dr. Jacob Johansson (Sweden)
is developing eco-evolutionary models for explaining fundamental patterns of
variation in plant community structures. The project is part of an international
collaborative effort to create a new generation of evolutionarily informed
vegetation models for predicting responses to global climatic trends.
Dr. Shuichi Matsumura (Japan)
is working on spatial modeling of interactions between anglers and fish
populations as part of the Adaptive Dynamics and Management of Coupled
Social-Ecological Recreational Fisheries (Adaptfish) project.
Dr. Johan Östergren (Sweden)
is looking into eco-genetic modeling of human-induced evolution
(i.e., through dams and fisheries) in anadromous fish in general,
with a particular interest in sea trout. His other research interests
include fish ecology, fisheries management, and population genetics.
Dr. Jose Siri (United States)
is researching how urbanization patterns and urban structure affect the
transmission of mosquito-borne disease, and how better understanding
of the dispersal of humans, vectors, and infection in this context
can lead to more effective and efficient public health policy.
Dr. Edmar Teixeira (Brazil)
is focusing on the enhancement of the
Agro-ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology developed by
the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and IIASA.
Dr. Mats Bodin (Sweden)
is using adaptive dynamics techniques to study the evolutionary
consequences of harvesting on maturation size and other heritable traits
in fish. His research is also part of the European Research Training Network
on Fisheries-induced Adaptive Changes in Exploited Stocks (FishACE).
Dr. Terence Fell (Sweden)
is carrying out research focusing on the institutional mismatch
between formal natural resource management policies and
the informal rules in use in local community contexts.
Dr. Erling Lundevaller (Sweden)
is focusing on methods for demographic projections, including
micro-simulation where the life course of each individual is followed. This
allows, inter alia, the spatial-temporal aspects of fertility and mortality to be
analyzed, allowing the future composition of populations to be predicted.
Dr. Rupert Mazzucco (Austria)
is working on computational models of non-allopathic speciation and
biodiversity formation along environmental gradients as part of the
Evolution and Mathematics project.
Dr. Upasna Sharma (India)
is researching issues related to communication of uncertainty
associated with climate forecasts and climate hazard warnings,
particularly, how the target audience of these forecasts and
warnings interpret, understand, and respond to uncertainty.
Dr. Katsumasa Tanaka (Japan)
is working on an inverse estimation of the global carbon cycle,
atmospheric chemistry, and climate system. His particular interest
is in climate sensitivity and learning to gain insights into
uncertainty in future climate projections.
Dr. Rebecca Whitlock (United Kingdom)
is working on the European Union FishACE project to develop
and apply eco-genetic modeling approaches that account for
anthropogenic evolution of sturgeon stocks in the
Caspian Sea.
Dr. Davnah Urbach (Switzerland)
is focusing on the evolution of mating traits in harvested fish populations.
This work is being carried out as part of the European Research Training Network on
Fisheries-induced Adaptive Changes in Exploited Stocks (FishACE).
The third IIASA Alumni Day, held on 22 October, brought together former colleagues from
as far away as Japan and the United States. The event included presentations by Jill Jäger
(IIASA Deputy Director, 1999–2002) on “Environmental change and forced migration”
and by Landis MacKellar (Project Leader, Health and Global Change; see page 25) on
“Health modeling: Some postmodern thoughts.”
Hans-Holger Rogner (Society President) welcomed participants and thanked IIASA for hosting the event,
Detlof von Winterfeldt (IIASA Director) introduced IIASA’s newly established Endowment Fund, and
Linda Kneucker (Society Secretary) led a discussion on the role and possible expansion of the Society.
Peter de Janosi (IIASA Director, 1990–1996) was designated the first Honorary President of the
IIASA Society. In his acceptance speech, he emphasized IIASA’s contribution to understanding
urgent social, environmental, and economic issues. He also urged the development of a cohesive
and active alumni network supported by IIASA’s National Member Organizations.
IIASA Alumni
The IIASA Society is an
independent association
of IIASA alumni
The event concluded with IIASA’s traditional international dinner, rounding off a successful day.
www.iiasa.ac.at/IIASA_Society
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IIASA § Staff
Mid-Career Researchers
Tackling global challenges requires a thorough understanding of the threats that
this world faces and the complex, dynamic, interlinked, economic, and social systems
that can cause unexpected and extreme ripple effects throughout the globe.
It requires creative and anticipatory thinking as well as smart, robust, and
adaptive policies that can buffer the consequences of extreme events.
—— Detlof von Winterfeldt, IIASA Options (Summer 2009, p. 3)
KENTARO AOKI (Japan; Forestry Program) At the analytical heart of the Forestry (FOR) Program lies a
complex integrated modeling approach to all aspects of forestry and land use. Working on
the linkages between the different global model frameworks, especially in the context of
Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), is Kentaro Aoki.
With REDD responsible for some 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, it has been
a busy year for Dr. Aoki, who came to IIASA via Vienna’s University of Natural Resources
and Applied Sciences (BOKU) and the YSSP Program. His major focus in 2009 was a
World Bank–funded project on tropical forest monitoring and assessment of land use change
impacts in the Congo River Basin. He conducted a spatial assessment to quantify the impacts
of infrastructure development and land protection governance in the region, for example,
how market accessibility can spatially change after road network improvements and
the effects of expanding natural protected areas.
A prime motivator and source of enjoyment for Dr. Aoki is the teamwork and networking involved
in his job. “IIASA is involved in complex, holistic problem solving,” he says, “and teamwork is
essential. This is what makes our analyses so much more relevant than normal academic research.”
To maintain a balance in his life, he offsets his intensive office-based data crunching
by trying to spend as much time as possible enjoying the natural world. For example,
he has been an active volunteer and coordinator of a high-altitude tree planting project
for natural disaster mitigation in Tirol with the Austrian service for Torrent and Avalanche
Control (WLV) and Nagano Japan–Austria Society since 2000.
“Interacting with local people gives me a fresh outlook on the problems I research at IIASA,”
he says.
CLARA COHEN (USA; Health and Global Change Project) An agricultural scientist by training, Clara Cohen
has focused for most of her career on rural livelihoods in developing countries. She came to IIASA
from the US National Academy of Sciences, where she most recently designed and implemented
a decade-long program to help African science academies develop capacity to inform health
policy formulation and implementation. For HGC, she has been investigating health implications
of urbanization, an experience that has given her a broader perspective on agricultural research.
Her research suggests that urbanization may carry significant health advantages in both
developed and developing countries, as measured by overall mortality and infant/child
mortality. A key reason is the improved access to health care services in urban environments.
For individual health conditions, the picture is more mixed, with the prevalence of some
conditions—malaria, maternal conditions, suicides, and motor vehicle injuries—decreasing
as urbanization increases, and the prevalence of others—some chronic diseases, HIV/AIDS,
schizophrenia, asthma, violence, and osteoporosis—increasing with urbanization.
A highlight of 2009 was working with the Stockholm Center on Health of Societies in Transition
at Södertörn University, Sweden, and the Estonian-Swedish Mental Health and Suicidology
Institute to organize a conference, in September 2010, in Tallinn, Estonia, on social determinants
of suicide in Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Baltic countries. Dr. Cohen has a strong passion for using science "to make a difference in human quality
of life and for advancing the principle of evidence-based decision making, whether it
occurs at the individual, organizational, national, or international level." She appreciates
the excellent leadership, mentoring, and support she has received within the HGC program
and the positive interactions and collegiality of the research team.
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ELENA ROVENSKAYA (Russia; Dynamic Systems Program) “The shortage of resources,
increasing demand, and other global factors will soon create a situation where
humanity will need either to find a new way to organize life or follow the current myopic
consumption-oriented mode which will eventually lead to collapse,” says Elena Rovenskaya,
who divides her time between IIASA and the Department of Computational Mathematics
and Cybernetics of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
A specialist in optimization theory and decision-making theory, Dr. Rovenskaya is
well qualified to judge. She believes that addressing the global challenges that currently
confront us will call for a much more efficient use of science. “Science has accumulated
a great deal of fundamental knowledge, of which only a fraction has been used to
date,” she says. “The aim of the new era of science efficiency will be to transform the
fundamental theoretical knowledge into everyday implementation.” Geoengineering,
for example, could be used to build a new physical world which will optimally accommodate
the increasing demand for space and create a very comfortable environment for inhabitants.
A 2005 YSSP participant with DYN, she has had a successful 2009, developing the
“systemic risk and network dynamics” project at IIASA, publishing seven papers both in English
and Russian, and winning an award for talented young scientists at Moscow State University.
The unique atmosphere at IIASA motivates her work. She enjoys the chance to discuss
questions from different angles, to learn new things from other disciplines. IIASA always
drives her to find new questions to look at and new approaches to apply. She adds:
“I also think that a certain informal competitiveness among scientists of my age,
which exists at IIASA, helps us all to maintain a high level of performance.”
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identifying tendencies toward dangerous changes in complex dynamical systems
(a)
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Training
Share of successful prognoses (%)
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 Optimal threshold  Simple threshold
Identifier
Prognosis
In 2009 Elena Rovenskaya tested
a new method for identifying
tendencies toward dangerous
changes in complex dynamical systems.
Massive simulation creates a training
database, which is used to identify
“safety” and “danger” signals on the
system’s future. The trained identifier
gives out a prognosis for the system’s
observed “real” behavior modeled
through test simulation.
example In a small-world network of agents, each repeatedly plays the Prisoner’s Dilemma game with the agent’s closest neighbors
mixed with a fraction of occasional newcomers. In each round, every agent repeats the action—cooperation or defection—chosen
by the latest champion in the latest group of the agent’s partners. The society collapses if all the agents defect simultaneously.
A “sociologist’s” task is to use the history of the observed sample agents to predict if collapse will occur in the next round. To solve
the “sociologist’s” task, Elena Rovenskaya trained the identifier to detect the next-round collapse-survival threshold. The figures show
the shares of the successful prognoses for test simulations in cases where the identifier is trained using a simple frequency-based method
(yellow bars) and a more sophisticated statistical optimization method (green bars). In figure (a) we see that for a society of 20 agents
the optimal threshold identifier trained with a database of 1000 sample histories gives out highly reliable prognoses as the number of the
sampled agents approaches 11. Figure (b) shows that in the case where only one agent in the 20-agent society is sampled, the optimal
threshold identifier predicts collapse with more than a 60 percent probability provided the size of the training database exceeds 50.
Dr. Vegard Skirbekk (Norway; World Population Program) An economics graduate who participated
in the YSSP Program in 2002, Vegard Skirbekk found coming to IIASA “a great relief” as it
allowed him to focus on “macro-oriented topics with an international, interdisciplinary focus.”
In October 2003 Dr. Skirbekk was back at IIASA as a Research Scholar, and in 2009 achieved
the distinction of winning a European Research Council “Starting Grant,” which allowed him
to set up a new research project here.
The new project aims to estimate age and cohort trends in terms of values and beliefs
on the one hand, and skills and productivity on the other. Demographic forecasting models
will be developed to gauge the potential effects of such trends on societies.
In the area of aging and productivity, for example, the project will develop more meaningful
“effective aging” measurements than those adopted currently (i.e., the proportion of those aged
65+ divided by those aged 20–64). To produce the forecasts, the newly formed team is weighting
the age-sex distribution of the population with employment, health, and productivity data based
on different measurements of aging. “There are huge differences in, say, age- and sex-specific
labor-force participation and health among countries,” says Dr. Skirbekk, “and the measurements
currently used tell us little about the real challenges associated with aging in different locations.”
The scientific findings of the study will inform the policymaking process in the developed
and developing world about the impacts of aging in acute areas such as health care and
social security provision.
When not relaxing with his young family, drawing, or traveling, Dr. Skirbekk contemplates
the possibility of creating a global aging institute, bringing together the best minds
from the different relevant sciences, perhaps at IIASA.
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IIASA § Staff
New and Returning Researchers
Forty-six promising and leading researchers joined or returned to IIASA in 2009.
They come from 19 countries and have backgrounds in a wide variety of disciplines
ranging from demography to mathematics. They join the 159 researchers already
at IIASA. IIASA’s success owes much to the talent and commitment
of its researchers and the staff that support them.
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1 Stuart Basten, United Kingdom 2 Andriy Bun, Ukraine
3 Jinho Choi, Republic of Korea 4 Kerstin Damerau, Germany 5 Sjur Flam,
Norway 6 Luis Gomez Echeverri, Austria 7 Mario Guevara Bonilla, Costa Rica
8 Sarah Hall, Sweden 9 Mario Herrero Acosta, Costa Rica 10 Leena Ilmola,
Finland 11 Pabitra Jha, Nepal 12 Adam Krzemienowski, Poland 13 Harold Lentzner,
USA 14 Karl Lilliestam, Sweden 15 Elke Loichinger, Germany 16 Jordan Macknick,
USA 17 Leslie Martin, USA 18 Lise Marty, France 19 Nikolay Melnikov, Russia
20 Leithen M’Gonigle, Canada 21 Mayank Mohan, India 22 Fabian Mollet,
Switzerland 23 Yu Nagai, Japan 24 Junji Nakazawa, Japan 25 Steven Ney, Germany
26 Andrew Noymer, USA 27 Tapio Palokangas, Finland 28 Elsie Pamuk, USA
29 Heidi Pardoe, United Kingdom 30 Anand Patwardhan, India 31 Joshua Payne, USA
32 Christoph Perger, Austria 33 Ndola Prata, USA 34 Elena Rovenskaya, Russia
35 Masatoshi Sakawa, Japan 36 Tatsuya Sasaki, Japan 37 Dagmar Schröter,
Germany 38 Upasna Sharma, India 39 Jose Siri, USA 40 Martin Spielauer, Austria
41 Marcin Stonawski, Poland 42 Detlof von Winterfeldt, USA 43 Charles Wilson,
United Kingdom 44 Li Yue, China 45 Bingzi Zhang, China 46 Sheng Zhou, China
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IIASA’s Research Leaders
Environment & Natural Resources
IIASA’s research programs and projects are led by
renowned international scholars.
Dr. Markus Amann, Austria
Program Leader
Atmospheric Pollution &
Economic Development (APD)
Population & Society
Dr. Ulf Dieckmann, Germany
Program Leader
Evolution & Ecology (EEP)
Dr. Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer, USA
Program Leader
Risk & Vulnerability (RAV)
Dipl. Ing. Günther Fischer, Austria
Program Leader
Land Use Change & Agriculture (LUC)
Energy & Technology
Prof. Wolfgang Lutz, Austria
Program Leader
World Population (POP)
Prof. Sten Nilsson, Sweden
Program Leader
Forestry (FOR)
(1 Jan—30 June)
Prof. Arnulf Grübler, Austria
Acting Program Leader
Transitions to New Technologies (TNT)
Dr. Brian O’Neill, USA
Program Leader
Population & Climate Change (PCC)
Prof. Anatoly Shvidenko, Russia
Forestry (FOR)
(1 July—31 December)
Dr. Arkady Kryazhimskiy, Russia
Program Leader
Dynamic Systems (DYN)
Ariel Macaspac Penetrante, Philippines
Program Coordinator
Processes of International Negotiation (PIN)
PIN Steering Committee Members
Prof. Mark Anstey, South Africa § Prof. Rudolf Avenhaus,
Germany § Dr. Franz Cede, Austria § Prof. Guy Olivier Faure,
France § Fen Osler Hampson, Canada § Prof. Victor Kremenyuk,
Russia § Prof. Paul W. Meerts, Netherlands § Dr. Valerie Rosoux,
Belgium § Prof. Gunnar Sjöstedt, Sweden § Dr. Georg Stillfried,
Austria § Dr. Mikhail Troitskiy, Russia § Prof. I. William Zartman, USA
Special Projects
Dr. Landis MacKellar, USA
Project Leader
Health and Global Change (HGC)
Dr. Marek Makowski, Poland
Project Leader
Integrated Modeling Environment (IME)
Dr. Fabian Wagner, Germany
Coordinator
Greenhouse Gas Initiative (GGI)
Prof. Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Austria
Director, Global Energy Assessment (GEA)
Deputy Director, IIASA
Prof. Keywan Riahi, Austria
Energy (ENE)
In 2009 some 205 research scholars, research assistants, and
postdoctoral research scholars from 37 different countries
worked at IIASA. Together, these 205 scientists contributed
124 person-years to IIASA’s research—an expansion
from 111 person-years in 2008.
31
IIASA § Financials
International Funding for
International Research
IIASA’s main funding came from prestigious scientific institutions, National Member Organizations
(NMOs), in 17 countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Additional funding came from
contracts, grants, and donations from governments, international organizations, academia,
business, and individuals. These many diverse income sources enabled IIASA
to perform research that is truly independent. IIASA would like to
thank all those who have given their financial support in 2009.
INCOME
NMO contributions
49%
Grants and contracts
50%
Investments and other
1%
IIASA Endowment Fund
In order to cope with global change, we must first
understand it.
In 2009 IIASA’s income was €16.4 million, 49 percent of which came from
National Member Organizations and 50 percent from contracts, grants, and donations.
The IIASA Endowment Fund provides an
opportunity to support this important undertaking.
IIASA is very grateful to the individuals listed here for
their contributions and for their belief in the goals and
mission of this institution.
OPERATING EXPENDITURE
Research program
69%
Infrastructure
19%
Scientific services
10%
Depreciation
IIASA research generates this understanding,
helping to provide decision makers with effective
policies to deal with its myriad effects.
2%
In 2009 research represented 69 percent of total expenditure, with 19 percent
being spent on infrastructure and only 10 percent on scientific services.
Summary of financial activities
Income
2009 (€)
2008 (€)
NMO contributions
7,988,404
7,997,651
Contracts, grants, donations
8,143,684
6,980,742
246,586
442,327
16,378,674
15,420,720
2009 (€)
2008 (€)
10,810,509
10,727,385
Infrastructure
2,941,600
2,984,942
Scientific services
1,626,802
1,417,467
Other income
Total
Expenditure
Research
Depreciation
Total
32
313,966
336,913
15,692,877
15,466,707
Contracts, Grants, and
Donations 2009
Barbara Boyle-Torey
Richard Caputo
Robin Dennis
Anton Dobronogov
Joshua Goldstein
Leen Hordijk
David E. Horlacher
Aviott John
L. Robin Keller
§ Amt der Niederösterreichischen Landesregierung, St. Pölten, Austria
§ Austrian Development Agency, Vienna, Austria § Austrian Exchange Service, Vienna, Austria
§ Austrian Research Promotion Agency, Vienna, Austria § Austrian Science Fund, Vienna, Austria
§ Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture, Vienna, Austria
§ Federal Ministry for Science and Research, Vienna, Austria § Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria
§ Kommunalkredit Public Consulting GmbH, Vienna, Austria
§ Max F. Perutz Laboratories GmbH, Vienna, Austria § Vienna Science and Technology Fund, Vienna, Austria
§ Equipe de Conservacao da Amazonia – ACT Brasil, Brasilia-DF, Brazil
§ European Science Foundation, Strasbourg, France
Roger Levien
§ Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany § Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V., Berlin, Germany
Johannes Ledolter
§ Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany
§ The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany
Marek Makowski
§ All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, Ahmedabad, India
Sadaaki Miyamoto
§ Italian Agency for New Technology Energy and the Environment, Rome, Italy
Nebojsa Nakicenovic
§ Ministry for the Environment and Territory, Rome, Italy
Cynthia Rosenzweig
§ Acid Deposition and Oxidant Research Center, Niigata-shi, Japan
Dale Rothmans
§ Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tokyo, Japan § Toyota Motor Corporation, Aichi, Japan
§ Korea Science and Engineering Foundation, Daejeon-City, Republic of Korea
Tom Schelling
§ ECORYS Nederland BV, Rotterdam, Netherlands § European Climate Foundation, The Hague, Netherlands
Bob White
§ Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, The Hague, Netherlands
§ Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Bilthoven, Netherlands
§ The Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute, As, Norway
§ Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway
§ Institute for Energy and Finance, Moscow, Russia § Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
§ Swedish Environmental Research Institute Ltd, IVL, Gothenburg, Sweden
§ Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Norrköping, Sweden
§ Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning, Stockholm, Sweden
§ Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills, London, United Kingdom
§ Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, United Kingdom § Unilever Colworth, Bedford, United Kingdom
§ CATF – Clean Air Task Force, Boston, MA, USA § Climateworks Foundation, San Francisco, CA, USA
§ Environmental Defense Fund, New York, NY, USA § First Solar Inc, Tempe, AZ, USA § Fountain Park Inc., San Jose, CA, USA
§ Global Environment & Technology Foundation, Arlington, VA, USA
§ United States Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA
§ University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
§ European Commission, DG Environment, Brussels, Belgium § European Commission, DG Environment, LIFE, Brussels, Belgium
§ European Commission, DG Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, Brussels, Belgium
§ European Commission, DG Research, Brussels, Belgium
§ European Commission, European Research Council Executive Agency, Brussels, Belgium
§ European Commission, Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation, Brussels, Belgium
§ European Commission, Intelligent Energy Executive Agency, Brussels, Belgium
§ United Nations Industrial Development Organization, Vienna, Austria
§ International Energy Agency, Paris, France § International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Paris, France
§ United Nations Environment Programme, Paris, France
§ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy § World Health Organization, Rome, Italy
§ United Nations Environmental Programme, Nairobi, Kenya
§ United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Geneva, Switzerland
§ The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA
33
About IIASA
IIASA is an international, independent, interdisciplinary research
institution with 38 years’ experience in researching global change.
IIASA is sponsored by its National Member Organizations.
On 1 January 2010 these were:
AUSTRIA The Austrian Academy of Sciences
CHINA The National Natural Science Foundation of China
EGYPT The Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT)
FINLAND The Finnish Committee for IIASA
GERMANY The Association for the Advancement of IIASA
INDIA The Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC)
JAPAN The Japan Committee for IIASA
NETHERLANDS The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)
NORWAY The Research Council of Norway
PAKISTAN The Pakistan Academy of Sciences
POLAND The Polish Academy of Sciences (Observer Country)
REPUBLIC OF KOREA National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF)
RUSSIA The Russian Academy of Sciences
SOUTH AFRICA The National Research Foundation
SWEDEN The Swedish Research Council for Environment,
Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS)
UKRAINE The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA The National Academy of Sciences
IIASA
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Tel: +43 2236 807 Fax: +43 2236 71313
www.iiasa.ac.at

2009 - IIASA

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